Catacombs outside Rome. History

Burial-vaults and underground chapels occur at a number of places other than Rome, those at Naples, Syracuse and Malta being especially notable. The catacombs of Naples and Syracuse resemble each other and to some extent depart from the Roman pattern because of the nature of the ground in which they are constructed.

The soil is a great deal firmer and more compact than the Roman pozzolatia, so that it was possible to design boldly and to avoid the excessive intricacy of many Roman catacombs. The general plan was then to drive a wide corridor straight ahead and provide it with arcosolia, the arched tomb-recesses occupied by the wealthier citizens. Across this principal corridor small galleries were cut and then lined, more often than not, with simple loculi just large enough to hold corpse or coffin.

Of the half-dozen catacombs at Naples, that of St Januarius is the most extensive and the best preserved. It remained in use until the tenth century and was enlarged at various times, but consists essentially of two catacombs, independent and set at different levels, but of similar form. The first of these is approached by way of a large entrance hall, converted into a baptistery about the year 760. To the right is an oratory, containing an altar hewn from the rock; this altar has a shallow niche, designed as the bishop's seat, hollowed out behind it and a recess large enough to hold an ample supply of relics.

Fragments of marble decoration and of a protecting screen have come to light and there is no reason to doubt the tradition that this is the oratory of St Januarius, even though it seems to have been constructed, perhaps in the fifth century, by amalgamating three earlier burial-chambers. On the left of the entrance hall there still exists a comparable arrangement of burial-chambers, while the back wall of the vestibule is pierced by three large corridors, the middle one being somewhat broader and higher than the other two.

This central corridor is the spine of the catacomb, providing space for a large number of graves, as does the subsidiary passage running parallel with it on the right. The left corridor is blocked by the stairway leading to the second catacomb. Here again there is a vestibule, which in this case is no more than a very large burial-chamber, equipped on each side with arcosolia ranged in two rows. Robust columns of tufa divide the back of the vestibule to provide the entrance, up several steps, into the principal gallery, which is flanked by two more cubicula.

At Naples as in the Roman catacombs a certain amount of the decoration remains but varies considerably in date. In one of the side rooms leading off the vestibule of the first catacomb, a painted ceiling displays a geometric pattern embellished with birds, animals and flowers but having no specifically Christian emblems. The ceiling of the vestibule itself is similar in general pattern, with a preference for rectangles outlined in red. A winged Victory occupies the central position; around her are dancing cherubs, antelopes and seahorses as well as masks, grapes and bowls of flowers.

But Scriptural scenes also find their place in this composition, presented as panels set within a semicircular garland at each of the four sides. One of these panels has been broken away; in another, the identification of David casting a stone at Goliath is by no means certain; but in a third picture Adam and Eve stand beside the apple tree, and a fourth scene, unique in the history of Christian art, shows three women wearing blue tunics and engaged in building a tower. This apparently refers to a passage in the second-century apocalypse known as the Shepherd of Hermas where a company of maidens carry stones with which to build up the Tower of the Church. Evidently at Naples the Shepherd won, at least for a time, its struggle to be received among the canonical books of the New Testament.

Elsewhere within the Naples catacombs the stock figures of Noah, Moses, Jonah and Daniel occur, as well as a group of portrait busts different in type from anything found in the catacombs of Rome. 'Here rests Proculus' is the inscription round the bust of a young man wearing a red mantle over a yellow tunic and shown as an Orans with a lighted candle at each side of his outstretched arms. Another circular medallion shows a man and wife with four children crowded together between them. These paintings are, however, not earlier than the fifth century, to which period also belong two realistic and well differentiated portraits of the apostles Peter and Paul. Both are set within rectangular frames on a background decorated with large chi-rho emblems: Peter, with his hair in a fringe, looks austerely downwards, while Paul, nearly bald, stares straight ahead in wide-eyed contemplation.

The largest of the numerous catacombs at Syracuse is that of S. Giovanni, constructed in the fourth century according to what was, anyhow at first, a carefully conceived plan. A principal gallery, almost a main road, 90 metres long and about 3 metres wide, was driven in an east-west direction and crossed by half a dozen passages of fair size, each with its complement of graves and leading to circular burial-chambers remarkable for enormous tombs hewn out of the rock. Special privileges are here awarded to sanctity as well as to social distinction. The saints have ampler space and more elaborate ornament assigned to their tombs, while an area near the centre of the catacomb seems to have been reserved for influential citizens just as certain ranges of loculi were restricted to the interment of children. Among the group of inscriptions found in S. Giovanni is a rare reference to the three persons of the Trinity: 'May God and Christ and the Holy Spirit remember you.’

Catacombs occur at a number of places along the North African coast. Those at Alexandria have the interest of showing that underground burial-places of the 'gridiron' type were being constructed during the period of the Ptolemies, three or four centuries earlier than the typical Roman examples. But such Alexandrian catacombs as can be considered specifically Christian have been desecrated to such an extent that neither the details of their construction nor the eucharistic wall-paintings which formerly adorned them can now be readily appreciated.

Further westwards at Cyrene appear several groups of burial-grottoes hollowed out of the cliffs. In one of the grottoes, two stumpy columns with rudely carved Ionic capitals uphold a frieze worked with a pattern of floral and geometric motifs but including three crosses, one with a serpent entwined about it and thus suggesting the serpent of bronze which Moses lifted up in the wilderness.

There is, however, more to see at Hadrumetum (Sousse), 150 kilometres from Tunis. This area experienced a vigorous upsurge of Christianity in the latter part of the third century, and several catacombs were constructed by driving a shaft through the intensely hard but thin layer of travertine stone that lies just under the soil, to reach the friable tufa beneath. Through this tufa parallel passages could easily be cut with rows of loculi set in the walls. The usual custom was to place the body on a layer of moist plaster and cover it entirely with a plaster sheath, so that, when the tiles are removed from the mouth of a loculus, it is still possible to trace the form of the body modelled in its chalky covering.

The Catacomb of the Good Shepherd and the Catacomb of Hermes, with its mosaics of fishing scenes, were adapted from earlier pagan uses, but the Catacomb of Severus appears to have been designed solely for Christian families. The chi-rho symbol is found several times in these catacombs, and an anchor, turned upside down, serves to suggest the cross. One epitaph deserves remembrance for its combination of hopeful assurance with the belief that the departed can influence for good the life of those members of their family left behind on earth:

Parthenope, you left Smyrna and came to Libya. Then you entrusted the end of your life to God. But, even now, remember your child and your father. For you are alive in God, enjoying everlasting glory.

The island of Malta is extremely rich in underground shrines and burial-places of varied type, dating from 2000 вс onwards. Most of the catacombs constructed or adapted in Christian times occur at Rabat. Of these, the Catacomb of St Paul is by far the largest. Here the principal staircase leads to a room which may have been a chapel and thence to another, larger hall, from which passages lead off in an ill- arranged manner to the tombs. Loculi are few and those mostly the graves of children, the greater number of burials having taken place in substantial table- tombs, flat-topped or saddle-backed, that are enclosed under canopies. As a variant of this type, some tombs were cut into the side walls, and then the square niche through which the body was inserted is preceded by an arcosolium.

Occasionally, and notably in the case of three splendidly carved table-tombs at Salina, further north on the island, the burial-place is designed to receive two bodies lying side by side. In the main hall of St Paul's Catacomb, as also at Salina, a circular table is to be seen, carved from the rock and surrounded by a stone bench recessed at one point to give easy access to the table. The purpose of this table is presumably to allow for the celebration of an agape, or commemorative Eucharist, on behalf of the departed. But the Maltese catacombs are poorly equipped with symbols or decoration of early Christian character; with the exception of a few crosses, the present frescoes point to a comparatively recent re-painting.

Notes: The Tomb of Vibia is on the Via Appia not far from the Catacomb of Callistus. Another elaborate painting shows Vibia standing before the judgement-throne on which sit Pluto and Persephone.

1. Early examples include Norman fonts like that at Burnham Deepdale, Norfolk.

2. Porphyry quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6, 19.

3. Commentary on Exodus 73, PL 34, 623.

4. Historia Augusta, 'Severus Alexander' 29 (Loeb), ii; R. Syme, Studies in the Historia Augusta (1971).

5. Eusebius, ad Sanctum Coetum 15, PG 20.1276, supplies a text: 'Remember that the Son of God calls all to virtue and reveals himself to all men's understanding as the Teacher of the Father's commandments.'

6. See for example the polychrome sarcophagus in the Museo Nazionale at Rome, no. 67606.

7. Ammianus Marcellinus, Life of Constant ius 16.10, ed. S. C. Rolfe, і.248.

8. The halo, or nimbus, is derived from the 'misty radiance', or crown of rays, sometimes shown as a circular plate of metal, which, in Hellenistic as in Roman art, bedecked the heads of gods and heroes. At first no more than a symbol of honour and dignity, it comes to represent the effulgence of supernatural brightness.

9. DACL iv.i. 167.

10. Ibid., 183. Novatus supported a rival of Pope Cornelius, but the account as given by Damasus seems to have little substance in history.

11. Peristephanon ii, ed. H. J. Thomson (Loeb), ii.316.

12. Januarius, a shadowy figure, is thought to have met a martyr's death in 305 ad.

13. Shepherd of Hernias, Similitudes ix.4, in The Apostolic Fathers (Loeb), ii.225.

14. Extensive catacombs are found elsewhere in Sicily: at Agrigentum, Lilybaeum (Marsala) and Palermo. Cf. G. Agnello in Studi 26 (1965).

15. In particular, the necropolis of Anfouchi.

16. Discovered by J. R. Pacho in 1827. See his Relation d'un voyage dans . . . la Суrenaique (Paris, 1827)